Microsoft’s LinkedIn has removed a post about Peter Schweizer’s book Red-Handed, that explores connections between US elites, including those belonging to Big Tech, and Chinese authorities.
Breitbart published a story on its website – “Peter Schweizer’s Red-Handed Exposes Communist China’s Silicon Valley Sympathizers” – but a LinkedIn user who wanted to share it, along with a post referring to China’s Communist Party as “committing a genocide and having slaves in concentration camps,” was unsuccessful in doing so.
Breitbart reports that the post got deleted for violating the social network’s professional community policies. The user evidently asked for clarification about what specific rules were broken, and was reportedly told it was the guidelines on “bullying.”
Who or what was being bullied here is unclear, but censoring content for criticizing China is not a first on Microsoft’s platform, which is trying very hard to maintain its presence in that country. On the other hand, Schweizer, an investigative reporter, claims in his book that Microsoft is involved in joint artificial intelligence research projects with China’s military.
Microsoft has developed two sets of rules, one for content visible in China, the other for everybody else, although there have been instances of LinkedIn users located outside of China being censored for content critical of the Beijing regime.
Last September, Axios reporter Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian tweeted that LinkedIn blocked her profile in China, noting that in the past, this was done by Chinese censors or Chinese companies in China, but that now a US company was censoring Americans.
Allen-Ebrahimian writes about China and internment camps in the Xinjiang region.
LinkedIn is yet to comment on why the post linking to the story about Schweizer’s book was censored.
In his book, Schweizer accuses US elites – including Big Tech leaders, members of presidential families, big Wall Street players, top athletes and universities – of being happy to work with China for their own gain, neglecting that of their country.
The result of that, Schweizer writes, is that some of the richest Americans are helping China build its rising military, tech, and economic empire.
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